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Friday, 15 July 2011

The History of F-Commerce [INFOGRAPHIC]

As Facebook nears it's 2nd anniversary of the first ever Facebook purchase (a $34 bouquet of flowers off 1-800-Flowers) social media influence have produced this astounding infographic on the history of f-commerce.

Facebook has known about the potential of f-commerce for a long time, as Chris Hernandez said, "90 per cent of purchases have some sort of social inﬂuence – your friend recommended it, or you saw it on somebody. Until now there’s been no way of getting that ‘girls in the mall’ effect on a large scale. That’s the opportunity: it’s huge and untapped. And we have the benefit of both scale and identity".

Having surpassed 750 million users earlier this year Facebook has the potential to become all the best things about online shopping; a suggestion engine from trusted friends, social search powered by Bing, and the chance to offer discounts and rewards to people for liking the brand or checking into a physical location.

Why aren't more brands taking advantage of it? The bar graph in the infographic goes some way to explain this. 44% of UK users said that they are not interested in buying anything from social networks yet, and only 17% said that they would buy from a social network only if it is easier than a traditional e-commerce experience.

So the big question is that although Facebook predicts that f-commerce is the next area to 'blow up' is the average consumer ready for it? We'd love to get you thoughts in the comments section...